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THE SWEDES' CHURCH 



AND 



HOUSE OF SVEN SENER 



1677 



THE SWEDES' CHURCH 



HOUSE OF SVEN SENER 



1677 



My Grandmother was One of the Swedes. — Sisom. 



4- 



PRESS OP 

AI,LEX, LAXE & SCOTT, 

rHILADELPHIA. 



'Ci. Tl. UxJULaJkCNAo/ 



THE SWEDES' CHURCH t 



HOUSE OF SVEN SENER.* 



"The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleeps!" 

The Swedes of the hamlet at Wiccaco, at the 
present Swedes' church in Southwark, having been 
the primitive occupants, near the present site of 
Philadelphia, (before the location of our city was 
determined,) will make it interesting to glean such 
facts as we can concerning that place and people. 
There they once saw the region of our present city 

scenes — 

"* * * one still 
And solemn desert in primeval garb!" 

* Reprinted from "Annals of Philadelphia" by John 
F. Watson. First edition (one volume) 1S30, pages 
133-138. 

t Note : — Prior to the erection of this Church the 
Swedes worshipped at the Block Houses at Tinicum and 
below on the Delaware (Sisom). 



THE SWEDES' CHURCH AND 

Mr. Kalm, the Swedish traveler, when here in 
1748, saw Nils Gustafson, an old Swede then ninety- 
one years of age, who told him he well remembered 
to have seen a great forest on the spot where Phila- 
delphia now stands ; that he himself had brought a 
great deal of timber to Philadelphia at the time it 
was built. Mr. Kalm also met with an old Indian, 
who had often killed stags on the spot where Phila- 
delphia now stands ! 

It appears from manuscripts and records that 
the southern part of our city, including present 
Swedes' church, navy yard, &c., was originally 
possessed by the Swedish family of Sven, the chief 
of which was Sven Schute, a title equivalent to 
the Commandant;- in which capacity he once held 
Nieu Amstel under charge from Risingh. As the 
Schute of Korsholm fort, standing in the domain 
of Passaiung, he probably had its site somewhere in 
the sub-district of Wiccaco, — an Indian name tradi- 
tionally said to imply pleasant place — a name 
highly indicative of what Swedes' church place 
originally was. We take for granted that the 
village and church would, as a matter of course, get 
as near the block-house fort as circumstances would 
admit. 

The lands of the Sven family we however know 
from actual title, w'hich I have seen to this effect, 
to wit: "I Francis Lovelace, Esq., one of the 



HOUSE OF SVEN SENER 

gentlemen of his Majesty's Honourable Privy Coun- 
cil, and Governor General under his Royal Highness 
James, Duke of York and Albany, to all whom these 
presents may come, &c. Whereas, there was a 
Patent or Ground Brief granted by the Dutch Gov- 
ernor at Delaware to Swen Gonderson, Swen Swen- 
son, Oele Swenson, and Andrew Swenson, for a cer- 
tain piece of ground lying up above in the river, 
beginning at Moyamensing kill, and so stretching 
upwards in breadth 400 rod, [about 1^4 "^'1^ wide] 
and in length into the woods 600 rod, [nearly 2 
miles] in all about 800 acres, dated 5th of May, 1664, 
Know Ye, Sec, that I have ratified the same, they 
paying an annual quit rent of eight bushels of winter 
wheat to his Majesty." This patent was found 
recorded at Upland the 31st of August, 1741. 

The Moyamensing kill above mentioned was 
probably the same creek now called Hay creek, 
above Gloucester Point, and the 600 rods, or 2 
miles of length, probably extended along the river. 

We know that Penn deemed their lines so far 
within the bounds of his plan of Philadelphia 
and Southwark, that he actually extinguished their 
title by giving them lands on the Schuylkill, above 
Lemon Hill, &c. 

The Rev. Dr. Collin has ascertained from the 
Swedish MS. records in his possession that the 
first Swedes' church at Wiccaco was built on the 



THE SWEDES' CHURCH AND 

present site in 1677, fi^^e years before Penn's colony 
came. It was of logs, and had loop-holes in lieu of 
window lights, which might serve for fire-arms in 
case of need. The congregation also was accus- 
tomed to bring fire-arms with them to prevent 
surprise, but ostensibly to use for any wild game 
which might present in their way in coming from 
various places. 

In 1700, the present brick church was erected, 
and it was then deemed a great edifice, and so gener- 
ally spoken of; for certainly nothing was then equal 
to it, as a public building, in the city. The par- 
sonage house, now standing, was built in 1737. 
The former parsonage house was in the Neck. There 
were originally twenty-seven acres of land attached 
to the Wiccaco church. These facts were told me 
by Dr. Collin. At my request he made several ex- 
tracts from the Swedish church-books to illustrate 
those early times; which he has since bestowed to 
the historical department of the Philosophical So- 
ciety. 

The original log-house of the sons of Sven was 
standing till the time the British occupied Phila- 
delphia; when it was taken down and converted 
into fuel. It stood on a knoll or hill on the N. A\'. 
corner of Swanson street and Beck's allev. Pro- 
fessor Kalm visited it in 1 748 as a curiosity, and his 
description of it then is striking, to wit: "The 



HOUSE OF SVEN SENER 

wretched old wooden building (on a hill a little 
north of the Swedes' church) belonging to one of 
the sons of Sven (Sven's Sener) is still preser\'ed 
as a memorial of the once poor state of that place. 
Its antiquity gives it a kind of superiority over 
all the other buildings in the town, although in it- 
self it is the worst of all. But with these advan- 
tages it is readv to fall down, and in a few years 
to come it will be as difficult to find the place where 
it stood as it was unlikely, when built, that it should 
in a short time become the place of one of the greatest 
towns in America. Such as it was, it showed how 
they dwelt, when stags, elk, deer and beavers 
ranged in broad daylight in the future streets and 
public places of Philadelphia. In that house was 
heard the sound of the spinning wheel before the 
city was ever thought of!" He describes the site 
as having on the river side in front of it a great 
number of very large-sized water-beech or button- 
wood trees; one of them, as a solitary way-mark 
to the spot, is still remaining there. He mentions 
also some great ones as standing on the river 
shore by the Swedes' church — the whole then a 
rural scene. 

It was deemed so attractive, as a "pleasant place," 
that Thomas Penn when in Philadelphia made it 
his favorite ramble, so much so, that Secretary 
Peters, in writing to him in 1743, thus complains of 



THE SWEDES' CHURCH AND 

its changes, saying, "Soutliwark is getting greatly 
disfigured by erecting irregular and mean houses; 
thereby so marring its beauty that when he shall 
return he will lose his usual pretty walk to Wiccaco." 
I ascertained the following facts concerning "the 
old Swedes' house," as they called the log-house of 
the sons of Sven. Its exact location was where 
the blacksmith's shop now stands, about thirty 
feet north of Beck's alley and fronting upon Swan- 
son street. It had had a large garden and various 
fruit trees behind it. The little hill on which it 
stood has been cut down as much as five or six feet 
to make the lot conform to the present street. It 
descended to Paul Beck, Esq., through the Parahs 
or Parhams, a Swedish family. The wife of the 
late Rev. Dr. Rogers remembered going to school 
in it with her sister. They described it to me, as 
well as to a Mrs. Stewart also, as having been one 
and a half stories high, with a piazza all round it, 
having four rooms on a floor, and a very large fire- 
place with seats in each jamb. Beck's alley and 
the "improvements" there had much spoiled the 
former beauty of the scene along that alley. There 
had been there an inlet of water from the Delaware, 
in which boats could float, especially at high tides. 
There were many very high trees, a shipyard, and 
much green grass all about the place. Now not a 
vestige of the former scene remains. 



HOUSE OF SVEN SENER 

Although my informants had often heard "it 
called the "Swedes' house" in their A^outh, they 
never understood the cause of the distinction until 
I explained it. ;>| 

The Sven family, although once sole lords of the 
southern domain, have now dwindled away, and I 
know of no male member of that name, or rather 
of their Anglified name of Swanson. The name 
was successively altered. At the earliest time it 
was occasionally written Suan, which sometimes 
gave occasion to the sound of Swan, and in their 
patent confirmed by Governor Lovelace, the}^ are 
named Swen. By Professor Kalm, himself a Swede, 
and most competent to the true name, they are 
called Sven's-Ssener, i. e. sons of Sven. Hence in 
time they were called sons of Suan or Swan, and 
afterwards, for euphony sake, Swanson. 

I found in the burial place of the Swedes' church 
a solitary memorial; such as the tablet and the 
chisel have preserved in these rude lines, to wit: 

"In memory of Peter Swanson, 
who died December 18, 1737, 

aged 61 years. 
Reader, stop and self behold! 
Thou'rt made of ye same mould, 
And shortly must dissolved be : 
Make sure of blest Eternity!" 

In the same ground is the inscription of Swan 
Johnson, who died in 1733, aged forty-eight years, 



THE SWEDES' CHURCH AXD 

who probably derived his baptismal name from the 
Sven race. 

The extinction of these names of the primitive 
lords of the soil, reminds one of the equally lost 
names of the primitive lords at the other end of the 
city, to wit: the Hartsfelders and Peggs — all sunk 
in the abyss of time! "By whom begotten or by 
whom forgot," equally is all their lot! 

One street has preserved their Swanson name; 
and the City Directory did once show the names 
of one or two in lowly circumstances; if indeed 
their names were any proof of their connection with 
Sven Schute. 

The present Anthony Cuthbert of Penn Street, 
aged seventy-seven, tells me he remembers an aged 
Mr. Swanson in his youth, who was a large land- 
holder of property near this Sven house; that he 
gave all his deeds or leases ' ' with the privilege of 
using his wharf or landing near the button-woods." 

The single great tree still standing there, as a 
pointer to the spot, is nearly as thick at its base as 
the Treaty Elm, and like it diverges into two great 
branches near the ground. Long may it remain 
the last relic of the home of Sven Saener! 

They who see the region of Swedes' church now, 
can have little conception of the hills and undula- 
tions primarily there. The first story of the Swedes' 
church, now on Swanson street, made of stone, was 

10 



HOUSE OF SVEK SEKER 

originally so much under ground. The site there 
was on a small hill now cut down eight feet. At 
the east end of Christian street where it is crossed 
by Swanson street, the river Delaware used to flow 
in, so that Swanson street in that place, say from 
the north side of Swedes' church lot up to near 
Queen street, was originally a raised cause-way. 
Therefore, the oldest houses now standing on the 
western side of that street do not conform to the 
line of the street, but range in a line nearly south- 
west, and also stand back from the present street 
on what was (before the. street was laid out) the 
margin of the high ground bordering on the river 
Delaware. Those houses too have their yards one 
story higher than their front pavements, and what 
was once their cellars under ground is now the first 
story of the same buildings. 

From the Swedes' church down to the navy yard, 
the high hill formerly there has been cut down five 
or six feet, and by filling up the wharves below the 
former steep banks, the bank itself, as once remem- 
bered, even twenty years ago, seems strangely 
diminished. 

At some distance from Swedes' church westward, 
is a remarkably low ground, between hills, having 
a pebbly bed like the river shore, which shows it 
once had a communication with the Delaware river 
at the foot of Christian street ; where Mr. Joseph 



THE SWEDES' CHURCH AND 

Marsh, an aged gentleman, told me he had himself 
filled up his lot on the southwest corner as much as 
three feet. On that same lot he tells me there was 
formerly, before his time, a grain mill worked by 
two horses, which did considerable grinding. 

The same Mr. INIarsh, then aged eighty-six, showed 
me that all the ground northward of Christian street 
and in the rear of his own house, No. 13, descended 
suddenly ; thus showing there must have been there 
a vale or water-channel leading out to the river. His 
own house formerly went down four steps from his 
door, and now the ground in the street is so raised 
as to remove them all. 

Near him, at No. 7, on the north side of Christian 
street, is a very ancient-looking boarded house of 
but one very low story, having its roof projecting 
bevond the wall of the house in front and rear, so 
as to form pent-houses. It is a log-house in truth, 
concealed by boards and painted, and certainly the 
only log-house in Philadelphia ! What is curious 
respecting it, is, that it was actually framed and 
floated to its present spot by "old Joseph Wharton" 
from Chester county. Of this fact Mr. Marsh 
assured me, and told me it w^as an old building in 
his early days, and was always then called "Noah's 
Ark." He remembered it when the cellar part of 
it (which is of stone and seven feet deep) was all 
above ground, and the cellar floor was even with 

12 



HOUSE OF SVEN SENER 

the former street ! I observed a hearth and chimney 
still in the cellar, and water was also in it. This 
water the tenant told me they supposed came in 
even now from the river, although at one hundred 
feet distance. I think it not improbable that it 
stands on spring ground, which, as long as the street 
was lower than the cellar, found its w^ay off, but now 
it is dammed. The floor of the once second story 
is now one foot lower than the street. 

On the whole, there are signs of great changes 
in that neighborhood — of depressing hills or of filling 
vales ; which, if my conjectures be just, would have 
made the Swedes' church, in times of water inva- 
sions from high tides, a kind of peninsula, and itself 
and parsonage on the extreme point of projection. 
The primitive Swedes generally located all their 
residences "near the freshes of the river," always 
choosing places of a ready water communication, 
preferring thus their conveyances in canoes to the 
labor of opening roads and inland improvements. 
From this cause their churches, like this at Wiccaco, 
was visited from considerable distances along the 
fiver, and making, when assembled on Lord's day, 
quite a squadron of boats along the river side there. 
There are some facts existing, which seem to indi- 
cate that the first Swedish settlement was destroyed 
by fire. Mrs. Preston, the grandmother of Samuel 
Preston, an aged gentleman still alive, often told 



THE SWEDES' CHURCH 

him of their being driven from thence, by being 
burned out, and then going off by invitation to an 
Indian settlement in Bucks county. In Campanius' 
work he speaks of Korsholm fort, (supposed to be 
the same place) as being abandoned after Gover- 
nor Printz returned to Sweden, and afterwards 
burned by the Indians; very probably as a meas- 
ure of policy, to diminish the strength of their 
new masters, the Dutch. There seems at least 
some coincidence in the two stories. 

The road through Wiccaco to Gloucester Point 
was petitioned for, and granted by the Council in 
the year 1720, and called "the road through the 
marsh." 

(Reprinted from Watson's Annals, 1st Edition, 1830, piges 133, &c.) 
My Grandmother was one of the Swedes. 

SiSOM. 



Reprinted by 

Griffin Eli. wood Callahan, 

Bedford City, Virginia, 

and 

DoRAN SisoM Callahan, 

Philadelphia, Pa. 

June, 1907. 



SEP 141907 



LIBRftRY OF CONGRESS 

llllim!l''!ll''f'!ll!< 



014 311 767 4 



